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A Journal about Real and Imagined Spaces and Places of the US South and their Global Connections

The State House Aflame 1833

Fire can burn brands on a slave's skin as he changes hands like cattle. And chattel slavery in a capital city is as old as fire and man. Milledgeville's no different. It's twelve noon, and the assembly's just adjourned; the State House is aflame, and water won't reach the heights a slave can. Sam's a bondsman.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire…

Without a word from his master, Sam fights the flames. The townsfolk fearing Sam might slip and fall from that tremendous height look on with agonizing solicitude. As he tears flaming shingles from the steep pitch white folks move official records, furniture, and money from under that roof to a safer place, safer than any Sam and his issue yet know.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, We don't need no water…

We cannot pass in silence over the exemplary conduct of a negro man named Sam, the slave of Mr. Marlow, of this place. And the legislature will reward Sam's fast action, heedless of his own safety, by appropriating $1,600 for the purchase of his freedom from John Marlow.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn